Sakura Blizzard - Author's Notes · 10:30am Oct 26th, 2023
I recently finished another story: Sakura Blizzard. This blog post will be my musings and notes on the story. It's a murder mystery, so if you want to give it a read I recommend doing so first, as I'll be talking about it unfiltered here; meaning there will be spoilers.
So yeah, if you want to give it a read, you should probably do so before reading this blog post.
That's your spoilers warning.
Constructing a Mystery
I'm fairly new to writing, I've not done this for very long, this is despite me having wanted to be a writer since elementary school. I guess taking the plunge with fanfiction was what finally got me to do it? Still, this means I'm not very experienced; especially so for the mystery genre.
For adventure stories or similar, like is my normal fare, it's much easier for me. Not only is that a genre I consume a lot more; it's also more straightforward to write. This story was written for the Whodunnit? Youdunnit! Contest, and one of the rules is that the mystery has to be solvable by the reader. This is tricky, to put it mildly; especially for someone who is fresh to the genre.
Like, if you put in too much signposting then it's too obvious; yet if you don't put in enough then it won't be solvable. I think I struck a good balance, but I wouldn't know. See, even though I've watched a fair few mystery shows, like say Detective Conan, and I've read the occasional mystery story... I don't really try to solve the mystery myself? I'm perfectly fine leaving the dramatic reveal to the expert. As an aside, I've played a bunch of Ace Attorney, and while those games are great; their mystery is more structured around figuring out the how of the murder, you usually already know from the start the who.
But basically, because I don't care to try and solve the mysteries myself, I think that makes me ill equipped to construct one. This is why I'm curious what reader impression is going to be; especially so from readers who are neck deep in the genre and love trying to piece the puzzle together themselves.
Fun with Names
Names in the MLP setting are quite interestingly constructed. This means you can have a lot of fun with them. I included quite a few name based gags in the story, of which I hope at least few readers will groan without me having to explain them. Which, by the way, is what I'll be doing here; mostly because I want to highlight it all.
The most obvious is House Radon, the family of nobles. If you're a bit familiar with chemistry then you'd know that Radon is a gas... specifically a noble gas. In chemistry this obviously has a different meaning; but it's a very funny pun to me. Most of the family also has thematic naming, Thor and Polo are both alluding to other chemicals in the decay table, for example. Ice Top is a fitting unicorn name, but it's also vaguely structured to sound like isotopes.
The other family isn't much better; all of them are derived from the same element. Both diamonds and graphite are allotropes of carbon. Diamonds are also usually formed by really high amounts of pressure, which also in part alludes to how the character by the same name turned out the way she did. Graphite is commonly used for drawing pens, but that naming convention is a bit more mundane and I think most readers would have picked up on that.
Basically, I had a lot of fun with this. :>
The Mysteries
A murder mystery needs a murder, naturally. Sometimes the twist is that it wasn't a murder at all, obviously, but generally speaking it's the journey to the conclusion that matters. This story contains four mysteries as a whole, though not all of them are very relevant.
The first mystery,
Is the one about what happened to Octavia in the past. This is not really something meant to be solved, and is more of a backstory that shapes the actions of certain characters. There is, however, enough pieces here for an avid reader to pick up quite a lot about what happened; even if clarity is lacking. Funnily enough, this backstory isn't something I just came up with off-hand, rather, it's referencing a previous mystery novel that I drafted well over a year ago. I'll probably get around to writing it at some point, but it's worth noting that that tale is more of a thriller than a fair games who-done-it.
The second mystery,
Is the one questioning the reader about who killed the victim. This is the mystery that the protagonist is attempting to solve, and the one a reader might try and piece together. There's a lot of moving parts here in this story, you get feed a lot of information and it's not always clear what parts are even relevant at all. To come to the right conclusion the reader will need to make a few leaps in logic in order to piece together why certain characters would have done certain things.
Without any proper test readers that are super into the genre, it's really hard to tell how solvable the entire thing is. I, as the author, would also make the worst test rabbit, given that I already know everything. Still, I tried to make it solvable without being too easy. I almost feel like there is too many hints towards the correct suspect, but if I've learned anything from video games is that you often need to smack the player across the head with the signposting if you want them to see it.
The third mystery,
This is the fun one. This mystery lurks in the background of the entire story, but it's not something that the reader might be primed to try and solve. After all, the protagonist isn't out to solve it, so why should you? If you've read the story, then you probably know exactly what I'm referring to here. All cards are put on the table before the end, but the question is if you can figure out the opponent's hand prior to that.
The fourth mystery,
Concerns a rather large plot point that gets discussed quite a bit: the family illness that the Radon family has to deal with. This is one where no answer is actually provided in the tale itself, though there is enough hints that you could solve it potentially. Part of the problem is that you need to have certain real world knowledge to solve it, that combined with making a leap in logic in order to even consider the correct answer.
Still, if you're curious about the answer:
The family illness is not an illness in the traditional sense. Instead the fault lies in long-term exposing to higher than average levels or radiation. This is highlighted in the family name itself, actually. Radon is a radioactive gas, it often exists naturally in the ground and slowly transforms to other elements as it seeps up. (Someone with better chemistry knowledge could probably explain this better).
Hot springs in particular can be a source of higher than average radiation levels. So if you spend your entire life living around one... well, you're going to run into problems.
The Writing of Canon Fanon
This tale features three fan favourite characters: Lyra, Octavia, and Vinyl. All three of them practically lacks canon personalities, outside of the one episode they all got speaking roles in (Slice of Life). That episode also mostly existed to confirm and validate various already established fan personalities for the characters. In fact, the only twist I can think of was that they decided to make BonBon a secret agent, which, honestly? I'm all for.
The problem, and arguably benefit, of writing characters that are entirely composed of fanon is that it's really hard to pin down who exactly they are. The story takes place prior to Season 1, so, naturally Lyra still lives in Canterlot, and very likely haven't even met BonBon yet. But almost her entire fanon personality is defined by her relationship with them, so what do? This story also don't include any of her other Canterlot friends, so that becomes tricky.
In the backstory, that I thankfully had prepared before I started writing this tale, Octavia and Lyra sorta knew each other, both having practised together for the orchestra. So at least I could lean on that for a bit. Still, I felt like I struggled to pin down a good personality for Lyra, ergo, I didn't end up including her in that many scenes. I think that's probably fine in the context for this story, but I imagine some people who would have wanted Lyra acting as the sidekick ended up disappointed.
Then there is the dynamic duo of Octavia and Vinyl. It was pretty cute fanon to pair the two together either as friends or as lover. Still, I'm a bit surprised that they decided to canonize that part in the show. In the context of this story though, I wanted to highlight that they weren't there yet. Octavia hasn't lived in Ponyville for very long at the outset of this story, so she's having a hard time looking past her differences with everyone's favourite DJ.
I actually wanted to write to include more scenes with the two of the interacting. At one point I had a scene in mind where someone accused Octavia for being the actual killer, at which point Vinyl would have stepped up to the plate to tell everyone how fucking stupid they were being; something which would have earned the unicorn quite a lot of respect from the cellist.
Still, in the final draft of the story there was no place to fit such a scene. Not just because of the word count, but also because there simply wasn't anywhere I could squeeze the scene in and not have it feel forced.
On the other end of the spectrum... The side plot where Vinyl ended up bonding a lot with her fan was kind of accidental, all things considered. It was always going to be the reason why she was there in the first place: She'd been hired for a birthday party but ended up showing up early because of the storm. But I realised once I started writing the story that I needed somewhere for her to be in order for her to not be the killer. She's already suspicious enough at the start of the story, what with just going and doing whatever she wants.
After that, it just kinda wrote itself. This meant I could sneak in a scene near the end of the story where Octavia and Vinyl can chat about it all, with some hints of the two growing a bit closer.
Sayonara and thanks for all the food
Polo was a very interesting character to write. With everything in hindsight, she is both the simplest and the most complex character in the story. But a key point is that we actually learn relatively little about it. The ending of her story isn't even rushed either, it was intentionally constructed so to leave many questions unanswered. What was she up to? Who knows. Did she have a sinister agenda? Up to the reader to interpret. Where does she go from here? *shrug*.
I generally let the reader draw a lot of their own conclusions here, which is probably for the better. I might revisit this character in a later story, if I decide to write a sequel. But maybe they decide to move and/or visit Ponyville? Who knows! It can be very fun to write a character like this, you know that it's the B plot, and you know you're not gonna get all the answers; but that just makes it all the more interesting, doesn't it?
The unaccounted epilogue
This is a bigger regret I have in regards to the story. There was supposed to be an epilogue that features Octavia and a certain other character sitting and talking about the entire thing in a café several weeks after the fact. It would wrap up a few plot threads that I felt were kinda left hanging. I'll probably still write and add the epilogue at a later date... but given that I promised to do that for one of my other stories, and I still haven't ended up doing it for that... yeeeaaaah.
That being said, the epilogue for this would be a lot shorter, probably in the 1-2k word range.
The reason the epilogue isn't there is twofold: I ended up getting really sick close to the deadline of this contest. Thankfully I was basically finished with the story before... but that kinda put a hamper to it all. The second reason is that the word count limit of 20k for the contest entry meant that I likely couldn't fit it. This story is pushing 19k words, and I'd rather do the epilogue well, even if that means it comes later.
